


April is the cruelest month

by goldenlaurels



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: AU, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Character Death, Fire, Hunters & Hunting, M/M, Magic, Mating Cycles/In Heat, Post Hale Fire, Scenting, Slow Burn, The Hale Fire, Witchcraft, Witches, alternative universe
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-09-03
Updated: 2018-09-27
Packaged: 2019-07-05 18:08:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,324
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15868965
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/goldenlaurels/pseuds/goldenlaurels
Summary: April is the cruelest month, everything smells like lilacs and the world seems too hot, too small. The air smells stronger, like spring is looking for new life. Desire smells sharp and sweet, but mostly like lilac, everything is lilac. When the rain comes it washes away the smell of everything and the doors stay locked, the windows stay shut. But lilacs are everywhere, it's in every breath and he's drowning in it.





	1. Ring around the rosy

April is the cruelest month, everything smells like lilacs and the world seems too hot, too small. The air smells stronger, like spring is looking for new life. Desire smells sharp and sweet, but mostly like lilac, everything is lilac. When the rain comes it washes away the smell of everything and the doors stay locked, the windows stay shut. But lilacs are everywhere, it's in every breath and he's drowning in it.

The first spring that Derek smelled lilacs was when his parents died. So now it feels like a warning, a precursor for death. And he is surrounded by it one month out of each year. When they were still alive they said that in April they smelled bonbons and fresh air, the kind that washes over you when you watch the sunrise, that's how they described it. And maybe that was why they didn't smell the hunters on their property. They were too filled with love and bonbons and fresh air to smell the smoke. They should have heard them, should have smelled them, but by the time they were awoken by the crackling of flames, it was too late.

He had thought Kate smelled like Lilacs. When he was with her it felt right, and if anyone had known he was dating her then they would have told him that they could smell lilacs too. It was a cruel trick, a ruse, and his family died because he thought he was in love. And he is reminded when the scent of lilacs descends upon him every year during mating season. The scent of his mate is just a sick reminder that he was responsible for his parent's deaths. He thought he was in love and he gave away their secrets. He let his guard down only to have those that he loved most taken from him. And when he thinks about lilacs too much it makes his eyes burn like they did that night, but he refuses to cry.

And he has tried everything to make it stop. He sealed up the house and he has cleaned top to bottom a hundred times over, and it works at first. All he can smell is acid and fake citrus. It feels like the house is new for a short time. It even covers the smell of smoke that has never quite left the walls. But by the time morning comes the scent of lilacs has already crept back in and the chemicals have burned his throat so much that he can't even speak.

The scent is almost always lilacs with a hint of rain, and he can always smell them, but on the better days it smells like coffee and the lilacs are just barely there, an afterthought to the rich warm coffee. Those days are better than others because he can pretend that his parents are still alive. He can imagine them making coffee and smiling over their mugs. His father would say something funny and his mother would laugh so hard she would almost spill her drink across the kitchen table. On these days he would stay in bed and imagine that they were just downstairs waiting for him to wake up. But no matter what, when he went downstairs they were never there. He is just met by a big empty house that smells of coffee and smoke.

But those two edged coffee days are often far and few between, most of the time it is lilacs that fill his nose, and lilacs that fill his brain, and lilacs that make him feel like he is on the edge of panic. He is still so afraid that something inexplicably horrible will happen in April. It has tricked him time and time again and it has stolen everyone he has ever loved. Spring is supposed to be a season of new beginnings, but it has only ever taken from him. It took his parents, his siblings, his childhood, it burned all of his memories at the edges and threw them back at him in a smoldering heap. And yet it tempts him with the possibility of love and companionship which he hasn't had in so long. Or perhaps it was just another cruel twist of fate that awaited him at the other end of the scent. For Derek inaction is the only practical action and somehow this feels like a punishment in and of itself.

And April may be cruel for dangling hope right in front of him, but love is not worth dying for.


	2. Ashes ashes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ring around the rosie  
> Pocket full of posies  
> Ashes Ashes  
> We all fall down
> 
> Derek wakes to the smell of smoke and goes to investigate, it's far worse than he imagined. There is nothing he can do now but run.

Derek jolts awake all of his senses screaming as the smell of smoke wafts into his room. Before he has time to process it he is already moving. He bounds out of bed, his chest constricting with anxiety as he runs downstairs. He bursts through the front door, ready to fight or run. but it isn't until his feet are padding along the dewy grass that he realizes that the smell is only faint. He breathes in deeply and it is filled with lilac, which for once calms him. The smoke is merely an undertone to it and he can feel the anxiety in his chest lessen. He takes big breathes of air until his heart slows.

It is probably just a group of campers thinking they could get away with camping on the wooded portion of the property. He sighs as he reasons with himself and sets off toward the smell. It didn't happen quite as often as it did in the past but every once in a while some group of campers ignored the no trespassing signs posted around the property. Whenever it happened he and Laura would go out to the police and slap as many fines as they could on anyone who trespassed. It was well known in the area that if you so much as breathed in the direction of the Hale property that you would be slapped with a fine so fast that it would make your head spin. Every once in a while someone would come in from out of town and try their luck.

The Hale property is so large though that without the rest of his family around to help patrol it, it's hard to catch people unless they get too close to the house or are simply grossly incompetent. That, or they throw caution to the wind and light a fire. Even then the wind picks up the scent if they are on the opposite end of the property. Snell tends to move slowly through the forest otherwise and will only come on faintly. The air has been stagnant the last few days, and with the added hindrance of mating season it's possible that the campers had been there for quite some time undetected. It made his skin crawl just thinking that someone was on the property without him knowing.

He jogs through thickets, taking in a big breath to track the direction he should be going, but something smells off. The scent makes him feel queasy, though he isn't sure why. There is something wrong and once again this sets him on edge. As he grows closer the smell only worsens and it makes him wrinkle his nose in disgust. It isn't until the scent is so strong that it has almost entirely blocked out the smell of lilacs that he recognizes it, and it stops him in his tracks. That smell, it's burning flesh.

He is frozen for a moment, unsure whether to run towards the fire or away from it. His stomach tightens and he doubles over nearly puking into the bushes. The smell is only getting worse, there is no screaming, only the putrid scent of burnt flesh. He stands intending to go back home and call the police and the fire department but as he turns away he thinks of his mother's face right before she died. Whoever was burned, it was bad, and every second counts. So with a steadying breath he pulls up his shirt to cover his nose and charges towards the fire.

If he could get there in time he knew enough first aid to help. He had made it his mission to learn human healing after the fire. The part the worries him is that he can't hear anyone. They are not yelling in pain, humans tend to do gripe and groan when they are hurt. The could have passed out, he didn't want to think about anyone else dying on the property though. The smell is revolting even though he is trying to breathe through his mouth but he can still smell it. It is so strong, so all consuming that it feels like it is everywhere at once and it is difficult to distinguish which direction it is coming from. He wonders if this is how his family felt when they died. Surrounded by panic and fire and the fetid smell of burning flesh. Tears sting his eyes but there is nothing he can do now but run.

He breaks through a line of trees which open to a meadow he'd been fond of as a child. But among the newly sprouting flowers a pyre that stood seven feet from the ground, black smoke rising from the corpse which was held aloft. The body hung limp, lifeless, and burned, their skin taut against bones and charred beyond recognition. He fumbled backwards tears now falling down his cheeks. And he ran, he ran like he did on the night that his family died. He ran until the putrid scent of burnt flesh was only lingering on his clothes. He ran until he was out of the woods and he no longer recognized the houses around him. He ran until he was surrounded by the smell of lilac and his limbs grew so tired that he couldn't run anymore.


	3. We all fall down

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Derek is interrogated, and unbeknownst to him there have been a string of attacks all leading back to one person. Even when you lock yourself away the world moves on without you.

The police had been interrogating him for hours, and Derek doesn't blame them. His story is suspicious, and the body was burnt on his property which only made him look worse. Plus there is no way a human could have plausibly pulled off what he did. He ended up tweaking his story as much as he could get away with after realizing how ridiculous it sounds in human standards. There isn't a single human that could track the smell of smoke from a quarter of a mile, especially as quickly as he did. And it only made it more suspicious that he was found at the edge of town not long after he claimed to have found the body. The times just didn't add up but his senses were switching between the extremes of fire and lilac which made it difficult to come up with a lie and stick with it convincingly.

The officers sitting in front of him now were doing a good cop bad cop routine. He was trying to cooperate, but the truth just sounds like a lie to them, and his lies sound implausible. He needed time to think of something convincing and preferably a sterile environment to do it. He'd blocked out the scents in April for so many years that it was difficult to be so engulfed in it, especially for extended periods of time. Bad cop is saying something loudly but he can't hear anything due to the overwhelming smell of her garlic breath that was wafting around the room.

It was starting to give him a headache when a man walked in and dismissed the good cop bad cop duo. "I'd like to talk with Mr.Hale alone." He said and the two cops trudge out of the room obviously disappointed that they weren't able to crack him. The bad cop glares at him as the door shuts behind her and a chill runs along his spine. Quickly he pushes the thought of the two women out of his mind trying to think of a new angle to tell his story. But when the officer takes a seat across from him, he is nearly knocked back by the smell. It's lilac, strong and sweet, almost mind-numbingly so. It made him feel a little woozy but he shook away the feeling trying to focus in on a different smell, anything else. He was so focused on pushing through the lilac though that he completely missed that the officer had said something. "Huh?" He said distractedly as he was finally able to catch the man's cologne and he breathed a bit easier.

"I'm sheriff Stilinski, I've heard there are some inconsistencies in your case." He said this evenly and Derek wasn't sure how to reply. He'd been working on a new angle, that perhaps he was drugged, kidnapped and driven to the edge of the city, but that would only distract fro the investigation of the fire which he didn't want. "You said that you smelled smoke and traveled a quarter of a mile back to it's source, only to find a dead body. Then-" He peered at a file just to be sure. "Twenty minutes after you say you found the body you were discovered at the edge of town claiming to have ran the whole way. Am I missing anything?" He asked and Derek shrugged. "Out loud, for the recording." The sheriff said and without a better story he wasn't sure how to answer.

"Uhh, yes that is what happened...to the best of my recollection." It seems best to just pretend he doesn't remember much, people already think he's crazy and this wouldn't hurt his already tarnished reputation. As long as they didn't take his confusion for crazy and pin the killing on him.

"We both know that isn't humanly possible" Sheriff said and this made Derek take pause, did he know? He can tell this man isn't a werewolf, but his senses are too muddle to figure out much more about him. It was just lilac, lilac, lilac, and a steady heartbeat.

"What are you trying to say?" He asks and sheriff Stilinski picked up the recording device on the table and pressed a button, the red light flipped off and for a moment Derek was nervous. Things that are left off the record very rarely are good.

"I think you're a werewolf." He said slowly, and his heartbeat did not stutter. Derek's mouth went dry and he tried to laugh but it only came out as a nervous splutter.

"That's ridiculous! A werewolf?" He said quickly and he couldn't help but grimace at how obviously it was a lie. The assault on his senses was playing havoc on his ability to lie. He just couldn't get past the smell of lilac and fire, it brought up bad memories. And seeing that person burned, he could only imagine his own family burned just the same. He tried to push the thought away, but as hard as he's been trying it's still clawing at the back of his mind. The thought of being caught, of anyone knowing and possibly putting himself in danger is all too much and he wants to run again. He could do it, he could break down the door and rush out of the station. He could run until he couldn't smell fire anymore, somewhere that he could actually breathe. But running would only make him look guilty and he couldn't leave the Hale territory undefended.

For the first time the thought that this might be meant as an attack on the territory crossed his mind. He'd been so wrapped up in the death, and the fire he hadn't even considered that this could have been an attack. This thought only made him want to run even more, though he wasn't sure whether it is towards or away from home. It could be a challenge, and it made his brain buzz with nervous energy but there was no way he could know the answer right now. His mind had wandered again and he realized that the sheriff was trying to get his attention and he snapped himself out of his spiral of thoughts to listen.

"Mr.Hale-" Sheriff Stilinski started but was promptly cut off.

"Derek." He said quickly, he didn't want to think about his family, or the legacy attached to his name. He just had to focus on not completely losing it. Turning in the middle of a police station would surely get him shot. But he couldn't shake the thought that someone was on the property right now. The house was undefended and someone could be digging through his family's possessions, or maybe they just burnt the house to the ground. He breathed shallowly trying to keep calm, as long as he could get through this then he could go back and protect his home.

"Listen, Derek, I believe you, but I need you to tell me the whole truth, not the half truths you've been making up." His heartbeat is steady and the smell of lilacs is about him. It makes him want to trust him instinctually but that hadn't gone so well in the past.

"Why would you believe me?" He asks and it comes out harsher than he intends but the Sheriff doesn't flinch.

"I have my own theory." He says tapping his fingers on the file in front of him. "Your uncle, Peter Hale, he disappeared from the hospital on the second of this month." And there was a long silence as Derek tried to process this information.

"My uncle is awake?" He asked and Sheriff Stilinski nodded. "What does he have to do with, with any of this?" He stammered still trying to absorb the fact that his uncle was out there somewhere awake from his coma.

The Sheriff opens the file in front of him to show a slew of people, all of them with bite marks, and all of them dead. "There is reason to believe that these attacks were his doing, it's possible that he is building a pack of his own. Do you know why he would be doing this?" Derek is shaking his head though it is less to give an answer and more for the purpose of trying to sort out his thoughts.

It felt like this was a dream and any moment he would wake up back home and nobody would be dead. He would still be warm under his covers at home and maybe it would even smell like coffee. But right now he is drowning in lilac and more information than he can process. He pushed through trying to put this new information together through the haze of overstimulation. If Peter is awake, if he is turning people, then he must be an alpha. But if he is an alpha, either he killed another alpha, or Laura is dead. The thought made tears prick his eyes and he fought to hold them in. There is no way to know for sure right now, but he had to find his sister, he had to find his uncle, they're the only family he has left. He is shaking his head, worried that if he spoke his voice might crack. "No." He managed after a moment. "I don't know, I don't know where he is, or if he's been attacking people. I don't know if he was involved in this fire, or if-" His voice cracked and he stopped to take a deep breath. "Do you know if my sister is okay? Laura Hale? He can only turn people if he's and alpha and if she died...well, then Peter might have inherited her alpha powers and it could have woken him from his coma." He said the last part quickly not trusting himself with thinking about the death of yet another family member.

"I'll look into it personally." Sheriff Stilinski said reassuringly and Derek tried to let this calm him. "But in return, I need your help."


End file.
